“Bridgette, I get what you’re saying, but—”
“I’m just so sick of it. So very sick . . .”
“I know this is a little on the eccentric side,” I said, maneuvering myself until I sat beside her, “but have you ever tried talking to her?” It was the same advice David had for Andrew, and I thought it had a lot of merit. “Maybe she’s not such an evil bitch. Perhaps it’s all just a big misunderstanding, and someday soon we’ll all look back and laugh about it.”
“If you really think I’m going to be Mary Jane’s maid of honor someday, you’re not as smart as everybody seems to think you are,” Bridgette said.
Annoyed, I started to stand. I’d had enough. If Bridgette wanted to fritter away the best years of her life blaming every bout of misfortune on Mary Jane, who was I to interfere?
She grabbed my arm. “Do you know what I wish, Poppy?”
“What’s that?” My legs started cramping, so I shifted—earning zero points for grace.
Bridgette’s nostrils flared as she gazed over at a basketball hoop. “I wish Mary Jane Portman would get a taste of her own medicine. I wish someone would take everything away from her.”
“Now that’s not a very ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ attitude,” I said, pointing to the purple rubber band around her wrist.
She took off the bracelet, laid it down on her seat, and stormed out of the gym. I stared down at the bracelet for a few beats, wondering if I should try and give it back to her or just leave it there on the bleacher. Well, I’d be seeing Bridgette Josephs second period, whether I wanted to or not. So I picked it up and slipped it onto my wrist for safekeeping. My day couldn’t possibly get any worse.
“Here, I thought you might want this back,” I said, setting Bridgette’s WWJD? bracelet on her desk. She glanced up from her novel but made no move to take it. “It looks great with your shirt,” I said, hoping to make her smile. Or at least stop frowning. “Well, maybe I’ll just keep it, then, and when you’re a famous singer, I’ll sell it on eBay and live high on the hog.”
Turning the page in her book, she muttered, “Suit yourself.”
“Okay, class, take your seats,” Mrs. Oliverson said as she walked into the classroom in a crepe polka-dotted sheath dress. I sat behind my desk and reached into my backpack for my folder. While Mrs. Oliverson prattled on about Shakespeare, I flicked through my physics notes, trying to weigh how much time I should set aside tonight to study for tomorrow’s test.
“Take out your pens and clear your desks,” Mrs. Oliverson said. “In light of all the essays that bore striking resemblances to the content covered in Cliffs Notes, you will be taking a pop quiz on comprehension. A sentence or two will suffice for each answer.”
The room filled with groans and I about choked on my gum. I could usually gauge when teachers would hit us with pop quizzes, but this one completely sucker punched me. I took a deep breath and smiled as the guy in front of me passed me my quiz. You can do this, I told myself. Remember how you aced the Hamlet essay?
The first question on the sheet of paper stared up at me as I struggled to recall the details of the Shakespearean play I’d read two years ago. Why didn’t Hamlet, son of old King Hamlet, inherit the throne? The answer totally eluded me; I couldn’t even pull a halfway feasible answer out of my butt.
I read the second question: Does Ophelia kill herself, and how did you come to that conclusion? and then scanned the third, fourth, and fifth, but none of them gelled with my memory bank. The words blurred and blended together into thick black lines, and all hope ran out.
Before I could stop it, a tear dropped onto the quiz. I brushed it off, only to have another tear fall and smudge one of the bullshit answers I’d scrawled. As I fought to regain my composure, all I could think about was how I was about to royally fuck up. And how Mom, once she saw my failing score, would ride me even harder. And how, now that I finally had some semblance of a social life, it would be ripped away from me. I couldn’t afford to do poorly on this freakin’ quiz.
“Poppy? We have to pass ’em up now,” the girl sitting in front of me said. With shaking hands, I watched helplessly as my pathetic answers made their way to the front of the room and onto Mrs. Oliverson’s desk, like an inmate on death row.
No use worrying about it now, I told myself. I needed to find a way to forget. And just as I thought of the way, “Amazing Grace” chimed throughout the school. I stood and collected my things. It was the perfect day to hit the mall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After school, Whitney and I strolled to the cream-colored convertible VW sprawled across two parking spots in the student lot. Mary Jane had beaten us and was singing along with the radio. It sounded like a Christian pop song. “I was talking to Bridgette yesterday, and she mentioned you got the lead in the school musical as a freshman. That’s pretty impressive,” I said. “I didn’t even know you were the theater type.”
Mary Jane turned down the volume. “Well, Bridgette talked me into it. It was a long time ago, back when we were friends.”
“Oklahoma!, right? I bet you and Andrew were awesome in it.” I ducked into the back and snapped into my seat belt.
“Yeah, we were okay, I guess.”
“She’s being modest. They were great,” said Whitney.
“Not that Whitney’s biased or anything,” Mary Jane said laughingly. “But anyway, Bridgette was all upset that I got the lead and she didn’t. She’d just sit backstage and glare at me all the time, which made it hard for me to do my best, you know? So anyway, I tried out for The Music Man the next year and only made the chorus. So I won’t even audition this year. I’ve got more important things going on—”
“Like helping me with the GOV Club,” Whitney said, and Mary Jane laughed.
“You guys never mentioned that Andrew and Bridgette used to be an item,” I said, steering the conversation back to Bridgette.
“Really?” Mary Jane said in a way that truly seemed like she thought she had. “Well, it’s true. They were. And then Andrew and I were matched up in that musical and, well, I felt really bad about it, but, well, we fell for each other.” She turned onto Calvary Road and headed to the mall. “It happens all the time. Just look at Zac and Vanessa.”
“Bummer for Bridgette, though,” I blurted. “She really liked Andrew . . . I bet. I mean, weren’t they together for quite a while before that?” I dug my lip gloss out of my purse and swiped it across my mouth, hoping my questions came across as conversational and not meddlesome.
“I tried to tell her I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I begged for her forgiveness, but she was horrid!” said Mary Jane, visibly flustered. “And it killed me, because we’d been such good friends for so long.”
“But no one needs a friend like that,” said Whitney. “That girl is emotionally high maintenance.”
“Thank goodness for Whitney.” Mary Jane smiled over at her beautiful best friend. “They say when God closes a door, He opens a window. And this girl was waiting just the other side of that window, bless her heart.”
“That’s cool,” I said as they exchanged cheesy little “best friend forever” promises. “I know it’s been, like, two years since all that happened, but maybe you should try and talk to Bridgette about it. When I was talking to her after the whole asking Gabe to the dance ordeal, she seemed to think you wanted me to go with him so she wouldn’t have the chance. And of course I told her that was ridiculous—” I paused, expecting one of them to interrupt. But Mary Jane and Whitney exchanged guilty-as-charged glances. “Bridgette was right?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” said Whitney. “Everybody knows Bridgette has a big ol’ crush on Gabe. So when Pastor Hillcrest announced the Sadie Hawkins dance, a bunch of us teased Gabe about the likelihood of her asking him. He begged Andrew to do something so he wouldn’t have to go with her.”
“And Andrew came running to me, naturally,” said Mary Jane. “Since Gabe had mentioned that you were cute—that pa
rt has always been true, sweetie—Whitney and I decided that you should ask him first.”
“Exactly.” Whitney turned around and flashed a big white smile at me.
“Oh.” So Bridgette was right about Mary Jane and Whitney tricking me into asking Gabe to the dance. Only it wasn’t to make Bridgette’s life miserable, at least not directly. It was because Gabe didn’t want to go with Bridgette, but he was too nice of a guy to tell her no without a good reason, and what better reason than to already be going with somebody, and what better somebody than the new girl?
But Mary Jane and Whitney didn’t really trick me into asking him, since I kind of wanted to go with him, at least at first, and they couldn’t have planned for me to be the one to help Bridgette hang the banner, so that part was 100 percent my fault. And now I didn’t really even want to go to the dumb dance.
As confusing as it all was, two things I knew for sure. One—since I bombed my English quiz, I probably wouldn’t get to go to the dance anyhow. And two—I was glad to know that Mary Jane and Whitney were not the evil bitches Bridgette believed them to be.
“Okay, girls, we’re here,” Mary Jane announced, killing the engine. “Bare Essensuals is having its big bra sale, the one it only runs twice a year. Are y’all ready to shop?”
We hopped out of the VW, and I instantly felt the worries and stress melt away. And with each SEMI-ANNUAL BRA EVENT sign we passed, my pulse raced faster and faster. I felt the whoosh of adrenaline as I looked around the store, taking in the bustling shoppers, the size-sorted bra bins, the displays of lotions, and the racks of silk, lace, and satin.
“So y’all know the plan, right?” whispered Whitney. In her pink skirt and white blouse, she blended into the trendy lingerie store’s decor like a chameleon.
Mary Jane and I nodded. Though the shopping bags were in short supply, we procured a few from the front of the store and dutifully dug into the piles of brassieres. I grabbed a turquoise-and-white satin push-up, a soft lavender lounge-around, a nude-colored everyday, a white strapless, and a lacy black demi, plus a handful of others.
Mary Jane lingered by the cash registers, sifting through the shelves of thigh-high stockings and perfumed drawer liners. She was the lookout, the distraction, the buffer—disguised as a gorgeous blue-eyed, blond-haired, God-fearing sixteen-year-old girl.
Though I probably looked like a total dork, I couldn’t stop smiling at everybody I came into contact with as Whitney and I joined the dressing-room line with our bags of lingerie. A brunette with a lizard tattoo on her ankle mistook my exuberance for a request to measure me. She detangled a tape measure from her neck and fingertips and held it ominously close to my chest.
I shook my head. “I’m okay. I already know what size bra I wear. Thanks, though.”
Peering into my shopping bag, she didn’t back down. “Some of those are A-cups, some are C’s. I’m just trying to help you figure out your real size, hon. Nothin’ more pitiful than a girl wearing the wrong size brassiere.”
I coughed, attempting to camouflage my laughter. Thankfully, my turn came up. “Well, just let me know if you want a different size,” the lady called out.
I locked the door. As Mary Jane had predicted, discarded lingerie items littered the tiny room, the number of sloppy shoppers clearly outweighing the number of dressing-room tidy-uppers. Whitney hummed happily in the dressing room beside me, and I wondered if she would hear my pathetic attempt to harmonize. I imagined lifting the wall between us—like an old-timey movie screen—and seeing her doing exactly what I was doing. Every movement instinctively synchronized, we connected in a way that verged on spiritual.
After I pulled my treasured thrift-shop T-shirt over my head, I checked out my reflection in the narrow, smudged mirror. My cheeks were flushed, my eyes open wide, the microstud glimmering on my nose, my bosom amply padded by the four layers of satin and lace and whatever else bras were made of—I looked beautiful. Exciting. Dangerous. Not anything like the crybaby flunking Mrs. Oliverson’s pop quiz that morning.
I opened my purse and took out the darkest lipstick I owned—a color called “The Devil Wears Red.” I swept it across my lips, careful to coat even the innermost corners. Then I leaned forward and kissed the mirror, right in the middle, temporarily fogging it with my breath. I could’ve stood there in the limelight worshipping my reflection for hours. But as was the plan, I had to keep up the harried speed of the bargain hunters.
My phone beeped, and Mary Jane’s 3 minutes message flashed onto its screen: meaning I had three minutes to make it from my dressing room to the front of the store. No problem. I handed my shopping bag—full of my random-sized red herring items—to the dressing-room attendant and acted bummed that none had worked out.
The crowd had grown since I’d been in the dressing room. Yet the shoppers looked out of focus and seemed to be moving in slow motion, making it simple for me to locate my two friends. Whitney stood by the lotions display, rubbing her hands together. One of the glossy cashiers passed Mary Jane a Bare Essensuals signature shopping bag and thanked her for her purchase. We watched each other through the corners of our eyes, coordinating a synchronized exit. I held my breath, my heart beating like a rabbit’s. No alarm went off. The mall absorbed us. We were safe.
Happy.
High.
I tried to hold on to the feeling even when I got home, knowing that by this time tomorrow, Mom would know about my pop quiz in English and all hell would break loose.
When Mrs. Oliverson passed back our pop quizzes the next day, she said, “Nice work,” to the guy sitting in front of me and when she stood beside me—which she seemed to do for an entire hour—she placed the paper on my desk facedown. No “nice work” for me. Not even a measly “nice try.” A knot formed in my stomach and I put off the inevitable for several excruciating minutes.
“How’d you do?” Bridgette asked. After the Sadie Hawkins disaster yesterday, I wasn’t sure she’d ever speak to me again, but as Gabe predicted, she seemed to have bounced back. She flashed her A paper in my face and I gave her a thumbs-up. The knot in my stomach intensified into a cramp as I flipped over my quiz and saw a big fat C.
I told myself it was better than a D or an F, but the reality was, a C was as unacceptable in Mom’s eyes as the lesser grades. Average. Seventy percent. Horrible. Unacceptable.
After that, the cramping sharpened every few minutes, and I could barely stand by the time I got to my physics class. The classroom smelled fustier than usual, and I desperately needed some fresh air. With a quivering hand, I filled in the answers to the test as best I could, skipping over the ones I didn’t know. It was multiple choice, my weakest test style, but I knew deep down that I hadn’t prepared enough.
Oh, I’d had every intention to study long and hard for it. When I got home from the mall, I’d gone straight to my room, stashed my stolen lingerie under my bed, and got out my physics stuff. But I kept zoning out, the “Puppies of the World” screen saver scrolling through until I’d lost count of how many times the baby Rottweiler came on. I’d IMed Whitney and Mary Jane and daydreamed about our next heist. Maybe we could take Whitney’s little sisters to a store and stealthily drop merchandise into their stroller. Or perhaps we should hit the video store, take some DVDs into the bathroom and break the little sensor gizmos, and then stuff the DVDs in our purses.
I’d stayed up all night, but not because I’d been studying. Every time I started worrying about my grades, I’d try and squelch it with fantasies of shoplifting. But that’s what they were: fantasies. Because I’d promised myself I wouldn’t shoplift anymore.
“Okay, time’s up,” Mrs. Clemmons said. I quickly filled in a few more bubbles, guessing A, C, C, and B for the ones I’d skipped. “Pencils down, and pass your test to the person behind you.”
The teacher sat on her desk and played with her strawlike hair while she read off the answers. Beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. If I could get the school nurse to call my mom and say I was deathly i
ll, would Mrs. Clemmons let me retake the test another day? Two bad grades in one day was too much. I raised my hand.
“Yes, Poppy?”
But what if the nurse wouldn’t help me out, or if Mom insisted on taking me to the doctor and all he found was a bad case of nerves? “Um, sorry. I missed the last few answers. Can you repeat them?”
She quirked her lips and repeated the ones I’d missed, then read the remaining answers. When the chick who’d graded my test gave it back, I just stared at it. No matter how much I blinked, the big red B-minus wouldn’t go away. Class ended but I didn’t budge from my desk.
“Hey kiddo, you okay?” I looked up to see David Hillcrest, WHEN GOD MADE ME, HE WAS ONLY SHOWING OFF printed across his T-shirt and his green eyes full of concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little tired or something.” The room had cleared out, leaving just the two of us behind.
He took the pencil from my grasp. I hadn’t even realized I’d smashed its entire tip, and splinters of wood and specks of lead peppered my test paper. After using the sharpener in the back of the classroom, David presented the pencil to me with its new, perfectly whittled tip. Next he lifted the pencil—and my hand—up to his lips and kissed the back of my hand. Heat rose to my face. I hoped he didn’t notice how much he got to me.
“That’s the customary ending to the Texan pencil sharpener ritual,” he whispered.
“You seem to have it down pat,” I said. And he seemed to have making me smile down pat as well.
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